Tag Archives: stephen lloyd

Ever wondered what happens on a Lib Dem action day? Lots of phoning voters, leafletting, delivering and stuffing envelopes. Eastbourne Liberal Demcorat candidate and MP till Parliament was dissolved Stephen Lloyd produced this video of an action day last month. It’s full of people who talk about why they have come along to help.

He’s holding more tomorrow and Sunday. If you are near Eastbourne and can make it, please sign up here or go along at 10 am.

The Eastbourne Herald is reporting that Eastbourne MP Stephen Lloyd has resigned as PPS to Ed Davey over the £75m proposed for investment in the A27 in the Autumn statement.

Stephen is quoted

After all the work and cross-community effort by so many local residents and businesses in Eastbourne and Willingdon, I am profoundly disappointed by the proposal put forward by the Department of Transport. Instead, there is a vague promise for some time in the future. This isn’t jam tomorrow, but more like the possibility of jam sometime, if we’re lucky, in a few years.

For the past few years in my role as MP for Eastbourne, I have been working with residents and councillors from across the political spectrum on an outstanding, £80million redevelopment plan for Eastbourne’s harbour. Together we have drawn up plans which aim to bring 1,500 jobs, new and affordable housing, as well as leisure activities to the community.

Tory peer and pollster Lord Ashcroft has published his latest set of constituency findings. He polled some of the key Lib Dem / Tory and Lib Dem / Labour battlegrounds in the summer – he’s now followed that up by looking at a further 22 seats. Of these, 2 are Lib Dem targets, 15 the party is defending against the Tories, and 5 against Labour. You can see the full results here .

Here are the headline findings:

Of the 20 Lib Dem-held seats polled, the Lib Dems would retain just 6.

The Tories would gain 7 and Labour would gain 4. The other 2 would be a tie (though actually a further 5 are statistical ties within the margin of error).

Stephen Lloyd, Lib Dem MP for Eastbourne, has posted the following message on his Facebook page to update people on what action is being after the fire which ravaged the town’s pier:

Dear all,

Thanks for the support posted here after the tragic fire at the pier yesterday. I am as shocked and heartbroken as everyone. The important thing now is to get this fixed; keep pushing out that Eastbourne is well and truly open for business and to do what we can to help the Pier owners and the folk who had concessions on the Pier. Some of the kiosk owners have lost their livelihood and it’s important we rally around.

The Guardian’s Rafael Behr has written of his experiences in Eastbourne, a seat won from the Tories by the Lib Dems’ Stephen Lloyd in 2010. His majority, 3,435, would need a swing of just 3.9% to be wiped out. The recent Lord Ashcroft poll of Tory / Lib Dem marginals indicated an average swing away from the Lib Dems to the Tories of 3.5%. This, then, is the kind of seat within the Tories’ reach and which they need to win if they are to gain an overall majority. …

In my constituency of Eastbourne, one in four households with children is headed by a single parent. This mirrors the diversity of modern families across Britain, where families come in all shapes and sizes, and reinforces my commitment to support and promote policies which enable each and every one of these families to balance work with bringing up their kids.

I am proud of the coalition government’s record on job creation and bringing down unemployment – reflected in the latest statistics out last week which showed that unemployment had fallen to its lowest level in nearly six years – but recognise that there is still more for us to do to ensure that everyone is able to benefit from the economic upturn.

This week, single parent charity Gingerbread has published a new report, Paying the Price: The long road to recovery, which highlights single parents’ experiences in work and of finding work. In reading the report, I was struck by how motivated single parents are to work and support their families – indeed 60% of single parents are already in work – a fact which is reinforced by the stories I hear from the single parents I meet at my constituency surgeries.

This afternoon the Department of Work and Pensions announces a significant change on the new Personal Independent Payments following significant Lib Dem pressure. Celia Thomas, the Lib Dem peer who has campaigned tirelessly on the issue, explains why it’s a major win.

Getting the rules governing Personal Independence Payments right is vital. The new benefit, which will begin to replace Disability Living Allowance later this year, will have a huge effect on disabled people up and down the country.

I’m broadly in favour of the change to PIP, which seeks to clarify the eligibility of disabled people to this benefit, the purpose …

Britain back in recession, embarrassing emails about government links to Murdoch. These are gifts to the opposition. The most open of open goals at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

I liked Miliband’s opening question:

Today we had the catastrophic news that Britain is back in recession. I am sure that the Prime Minister has spent the past 24 hours thinking of an excuse as to why it is nothing to do with him, so what is his excuse

It’s important to find things to be cheerful about in these serious days. So I was pleased, last weekend, to be recognised publicly as an errant lefty by my good friend Stephen Lloyd, the MP for Eastbourne, in his speech to the South East Regional Conference in Whitstable.

It’s been a difficult Coalition so far for many of us, particularly the social liberals (or left-leaning liberals as I am very happy to be known).

At the time of the tuition fees debacle, a group of 104 of our 2010 general election slate got our 15 seconds of ‘media’ as we called for

Today was the fiftieth anniversary of Prime Minister’s Questions. And it was a fairly typical session. As always, it was in two parts.

Part one: Lots of jeering, cheering, knockabout, winding-up and prepared lines exchanged between the PM and opposition leader.

Part Two: Generally hum-drum but important questions from various back-benchers, largely heard in earnest silence.

The bit that most people will see will be the short bit on the telly, which will be a few seconds of ya-boo politics. In itself, that is a good piece of democracy in that it highlights the weaknesses of the government and the opposition. The longer …

The last 24 hours’ political news has been dominated by the Boundary Commission for England’s proposals for new parliamentary constituencies — and in particular the reduction from 533 to 502 in accordance with the Coalition Agreement to reduce the size of the House of Commons.

I’m a self-confessed politics geek, so I find this stuff interesting. But I was surprised that it should be the lead news item on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning — does the public care as much as us anoraks? I doubt it.

True, some members of the public will have particular concerns about …

For a decade now I have been the general secretary of EMAG, the Equitable Members’ Action Group, a campaigning group for those who lost out because of maladministration and regulatory failure at the once venerable insurance firm Equitable Life. Our pursuit of justice for Equitable Life policyholders started in the summer of 2000. Shortly after, Vince Cable took up the cause and together we walked to Downing Street to deliver a protest letter to Gordon Brown on 6th August, 2001. It was the start of my personal politicisation and I became a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Camden in 2006. …

Next week the Government will announce legislation to reform legal aid, following a Green Paper published last November to which the Ministry of Justice received an unprecedented 5,000 responses. Whilst “legal aid reform” was in the Coalition Agreement, the scale of proposed changes has taken many aback – in order to cut the legal aid budget by £350million, Justice Ministers propose taking whole categories of law related problems out legal aid entitlement – housing and debt problems, welfare benefit issues, employment law issues, immigration cases, consumer law problems, education cases and private family law issues (eg divorce and …

A news release from the party brings the news of the following three appointments:

Martin Horwood, co-chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee for International Affairs (replacing Tim Farron, who has stood down on becoming President)

Julian Huppert, co-chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee for Transport

Stephen Lloyd, co-chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee for Northern Ireland

Annette Brooke, co-chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee for Communities and Local Government (covering for Simon Hughes for six months during his tenure as the Government’s Advocate for Access to Education

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 660 party members have responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results.

LDV asked: Which of the newly elected Lib Dem MPs has genuinely impressed you to date?

Our sample of party members could tick as many (or few) of the 10 ‘newbie’ MPs as they liked. Here are the top five:

The last six months as the new Lib Dem MP for Eastbourne have been more of a rollercoaster than I could ever have imagined they would be! I’ve been pretty much just as flat out, albeit in a different way, as an MP as I was during the 6 months frenetic run up to the General Election.

Much has gone on as you’ll all be aware but the two things I’d like to write about today show the upside of being in Government and the upside of having the privilege of influence all MPs enjoy.

Lawyers for Nigel Waterson, who was Eastbourne MP until 2010, confirmed he was to sue Stephen Lloyd for libel. The action is to centre on a leaflet produced by his Liberal Democrat successor during the 2010 general election campaign.

The Corporation notes that “Mr Waterson was cleared of any wrong-doing over his expenses claims”, so let’s remind ourselves of his expenses record:

Nigel Waterson claimed mortgage interest/rent payments and food bills at his second home in Beckenham, Kent. Also billed taxpayer £1,055 to paint house and garage

There’s good news for Lib Dem candidate Stephen Lloyd in his campaign to win the Tory seat of Eastbourne – one of his residents, a former Tory MP, has pledged to vote for Stephen declaring the Lib Dem “will prove to be a dedicated, open and hardworking member of parliament for the Eastbourne constituency”.

A FORMER Conservative MP and Eastbourne voter has publicly vowed not to vote for Tory Nigel Waterson at the forthcoming General election. Ernle Money, a Conservative MP for Ipswich in the 1970s who lives in Furness Road, said

Recent Comments

Andrew2nd Aug - 11:10pmSimon, Signs are that 92% of voters (or at any rate about 65% of 2010 Liberal Democrat voters) regarded Nick Clegg as a promise breaker...

Jane Ann Liston2nd Aug - 11:09pmYour article struck several chords, Siobhan. I recall murmurs about a very talented cllr in Edinburgh who was a parliamentary candidate, because of the style...

Andrew2nd Aug - 11:07pmManfarang, Trust is the most important commodity in politics. The Tories manoeuvered Nick Clegg into breaking the pledge, and I am sure they regularly toast...

Simon Arnold2nd Aug - 11:00pmIndeed. I would sell it all off, end all subsidy and let the free market, decide who survives via market forces. Then, Taxation can be...

Simon Shaw2nd Aug - 10:58pm@expats But what you say still doesn't support the claim that "92% of voters regarded Nick Clegg as being David Cameron’s little helper," which is...

Jane Ann Liston2nd Aug - 10:55pmAs an unofficial Fringe attraction, you might like to note that PS Waverley will be sailing from Bournemouth during Conference: http://booking.waverleyexcursions.co.uk/?sailing_area=4&sailing_departure=89 Ideal for escaping to...